There are few better ways right now to spend 80 movie minutes than to see “Iris,” a delightful eye-opener about life, love, statement eyeglasses, bracelets the size of tricycle tires and the art of making the grandest of entrances. Directed by Albert Maysles — one half of the legendary documentary team that made “Grey Gardens” — this is a documentary about a very different kind of woman who holds your imagination from the moment she appears. You can’t take your eyes off Iris Apfel (she wouldn’t have it any other way), but, then, why would you want to?

You may have seen her before, peering out of a luxury magazine in a gaudy fur cloud in a jewelry advertisement or, in another campaign, cozily perched on a park bench alongside the model Karlie Kloss. Ms. Kloss wears all white; Ms. Apfel, her customary bold palette muted, wears blue socks with white polka dots, tee-ready green slacks and a dusky rose coat, a large white bow tied around her neck. The bow makes her look like a gift, which, in a way, she is. As you discover, she would prefer you look at the bow than try to untie it to see what lies beneath. You get the bullet-point versions of her life both in talking-head interviews and while she’s on the somewhat slow, but persistent run: She was born in Queens, in 1921, and married a charmer named Carl Apfel, with whom she ran a textile company and engaged in extreme globe-trotting. They never had children; they had each other. They also had the obvious means to collect an astonishment of luxury items and cut-rate stuff, some of which she wears, some of which she lives with, like the oversized replica of the RCA dog, plush toys, statuary, ornate vases and gilt mirrors.

You could furnish a couple of flats with all the furniture and tchotchkes that adorn the Apfels’ homes, including one apartment on Park Avenue and another in Palm Beach. (She appears to be the family shopper, at least these days.) You could fill an exhibition with all of her outfits, which is, on a modest level, what the Metropolitan Museum of Art did with “Rara Avis: Selections From the Iris Apfel Collection,” which opened in September 2005. In the movie, Harold Koda, the curator in charge of the museum’s Costume Institute, discusses the pragmatic reasons and artistic rationale for highlighting objects from Ms. Apfel’s voluminous holdings. A smash, the exhibition dazzled fashion insiders and traveled to other museums. It also turned Ms. Apfel into a star.

She prefers the descriptor “geriatric starlet” — her turns of phrase are as vibrantly ornamented as her body — a celebrity that led to swarming fans, interviews, magazine spreads and of course this documentary. She clearly enjoys the attention, even if it sometimes seems to carry the sour whiff of condescension. Every so often in the documentary, you can hear someone who isn’t part of the movie team talk to Ms. Apfel in the patronizing tones that some reserve for old folks, children, foreigners and “the help,” as if they were speaking to someone stupid when it’s the reverse. Mr. Maysles, working with a small crew, doesn’t comment on these moments, but his point of view is evident in every camera angle and edit in this exactingly constructed documentary.

A few years ago, Architectural Digest described Ms. Apfel’s Park Avenue apartment as looking “a little as if the Collyer brothers had moved in with Madame de Pompadour.” That’s a clever bit of journalistic acid, but the documentary paints a vividly contrary picture. A radical individualist, Ms. Apfel embodies a profoundly alternative reality and another kind of truth, one that may be threatening to some. Writers tend to deploy words like kooky, eccentric and so forth when describing her style, when, mostly, I think, they mean “does not compute.” There’s an uneasiness to even some of this praise, a disquiet that, in the movie, you see and hear in certain words and looks. Are these people admiring or threatened? It’s hard to know, just as it’s tough to tell if the patronizing tones are because of her age, looks or both. What is clear is that while there are several stories folded into “Iris” — a marriage tale, an ode to multiculturalism and a fashion spectacular — it is also about the insistent rejection of monocultural conformity.

“Iris” is the second-to-last documentary from Mr. Maysles, who died on March 5. (His final is “In Transit.”) Mr. Maysles, with his brother, David (who died in 1987), directed a number of genre-defining documentaries, including “Salesman,” “Gimme Shelter” and, of course, “Grey Gardens.” In that film, the brothers defy direct-cinema conventions by inserting themselves into the picture, a potential transgression that personalizes the movie all the more. In some documentaries, the director prefers to stay out of sight and perhaps out of mind. Here, though, Mr. Maysles pops up again, both on camera and as an out-of-frame presence that Ms. Apfel addresses. These moments pierce the heart because he’s now gone and because, you sense, that this portrait of a glorious rebel is also and unmistakably a self-portrait.

“Iris” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Shopping.

Iris

NYT Critic's Pick

Director

Albert Maysles

Stars

Carl Apfel, Iris Apfel

Rating

PG-13

Running Time

1h 19m

Genres

Documentary, Biography, History

Movie data powered by IMDb.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: How She Got That Look: A Fashion Arbiter at 93. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe